ice Gibson.
Of this there were not half-a-dozen witnesses, all of whom were given
immediate reason to suppose that either they or the pair in question had
made a mistake; for nothing could have surpassed the presence of mind
and the kindness of heart with which Sir Baldwin Gibson chatted to the
woman whom he had tried for her life within the year. And his charity
continued behind her back.

"Odd thing," said Sir Baldwin to his hostess, at the earliest
opportunity, "but for the moment I could have sworn that woman was some
one else. May I ask who she is exactly?"

"Sure, Sir Baldwin," replied Mrs. Uniacke, "and that's what I thought we
were to hear at last. It's who she is we none of us know. And what does
it matter? She's pretty and nice, and I'm just in love with her; but
then nobody knows any more about her husband, and so we talk."

A few more questions satisfied the judge that he could not possibly have
been mistaken, and he hesitated a moment, for he was a pious man; but
Rachel's face, combined with her nerve, had deepended an impression
which was now nearly a year old, and the superfluous proximity of an
angular and aquiline lady, to whom Sir Baldwin had not been introduced,
but who was openly hanging upon his words, drove the good man's last
scruple to the winds.

"Very deceptive, these likenesses," said he, raising his voice for the
interloper's benefit; "in future I shall beware of them. I needn't tell
you, Mrs. Uniacke, that I never before set eyes upon the lady whom I
fear I embarrassed by behaving as though I had."

Rachel was not less fortunate in her companion of the moment which had
so nearly witnessed her undoing. Ox-eyed Hugh Woodgate saw nothing
inexplicable in Mrs. Steel's behavior upon her introduction to Sir
Baldwin Gibson, and anything he did see he attributed to an inconvenient
sense of that dignitary's greatness. He did not think the matter worth
mentioning to his wife, when the Steels had dropped them at the
Vicarage gate, after a pleasant but somewhat silent drive. Neither did
Rachel see fit to speak of it to her husband. There was a certain
unworthy satisfaction in her keeping something from him. But again she
underrated his uncanny powers of observation, and yet again he turned
the tables upon her by a sudden display of the very knowledge which she
was painfully keeping to herself.

"Of course you recognized the judge?" said Steel, following his wife for
once into her own apartments, w